17 g - DARKLIGHT (1st sequel to TRH)
by teddybowties
Summary: The Doctor learns to Rejoice in the Sun. MPREG in previous story.
1. prologue

Prologue: Red Sign in the Mooring

Letters in red.

They fly in the face of the dusk outside.

Flamina can feel them, calling her to slip deeper, to find them out. To dare and wipe them off the wall.

K.O.L.M.

But she cannot see them.

Are they being spoken?

Cannot hear them.

The light outside is violet and pale, bled through by clouds of loud red.

Flamina cannot fathom their twisting way along her neural pathways, their floating forays along the dust already settling in her sleeping mind.

Already, her hand is scrabbling in the sheets, wild. Variable. Lashing out.

Sweat stings in her eyes, bringing salt and random sensations. She blinks.

The soft of pillowcase.

The hard of the Master's absence last night.

A middle toe that nearly froze because the coverlet came off sometime in the night.

Her fingers spill over the thickness of the closest heavy bed post, white nails crouching like a hungry spider as awake fills her brain.

She rubs a white hand through her long white hair and glances at the window instinctively, buttering herself up for the cold flush of daylight.

But there are no twin suns winking drunk eyes through the glass at her, blinding her with the daylight.

No. the dark is still there, the chorus of twilight.

And, no stars.

"Still night," she murmurs, dazed as she calls out to the wall panel to light the room, "...bright, 30 to 35 per cent."

No light, no light.

"Wall panel, restore settings!"

Still no light.

And now, the room, still dark, seeks to threaten her with its mounting emptiness.

Shrugging into the bed sheet like daddy taught her, Flamina falls out of bed and finds a wall after a tumble over air and some resultant fondling of the carpet.

On her knees now, she heads for a corner, feeling around.

Feel, touch, hear.

Feel, touch, hear.

Stop.

Fluff. Probably carpet. No,no... too smooth. It's that pile of silk underthings she bought the Master but never wrapped because he failed to show last night. And now that she's looking for it, the big red bow is still there, shining sadly in the not-light.

Pity.

The carpet, not the underthings.

Because her foot feels cold.

She must have knocked her water mussing about near her bed in the dark.

Her hands lift her up, along the solid flat of wall near a raised indentation.

"Ah, the door panel!" she cries, hitting the signature triangle button of the manual lock.

It's rather like an elevator... the thought bubbles from somewhere. She ignores it.

The entry sticks, then slides, spilling Flamina half out of doors and into the silvery hallway.

"Aunty River always had a pie in the TARDIS icebox for me..." she breathes as she stands up, then pulls up the sheet she's draped toga-style around herself, "...it's a long shot, but maybe the kitchenette for this floor is operational again... damn thing was on the fritz yesterday, I remember it buzzing and sparking..."

The shadows are long in the hall that leads to the food machine, however, and her wings are not out.

The breath on her tongue is cold ice between her teeth.

She inhales frost suddenly, and the sound of footsteps behind her rattles her brains.

Half asleep, she remembers what was instilled into her bones by the Doctor, and takes it to hearts.

Her pounding legs carry her down by the north stairwell, her naked feet slapping against the slick tiles of the Panopticon's third floor of apartments.

Descent.

Descent.

Descent.

Draw the enemy into a trap.

Blind with purpose she gallops in a downward springing circle, a white horse amid trees of silver and stone.

Wet, warm, thick liquid gushes through her toes and she loses her balance, falling into the private teleport panel sometimes used to access the Panopticon more quickly from the central stair.

Her face immediately slams the three-prong slit in the floor that conceals the Eye.

She touches the bruise, squeaking as an arc of dark blood follows her fingertip and morbidly rubbing thumb from the floor, as though the gravity's been displaced.

It's... not hers.

She looks up, following the strange trail of blood as it floats up from the ground, such a strange thing.

But there is one way it could happen.

If the person who lost it was still alive... or immortal.

Her eyes glaze like iced pottery as she follows the blood farther up its line of resolve, up, up, up.

Beyond the high windows, the rows of stout benches perched under stone canopies.

Beyond the arches that support the Panopticon's emerald dome.

Beyond all of this, Flamina stares at the thing dangling from the place where the pod fell.

For there in the top of the dome, there is strung the flayed remains of a singular presence, a hawk among pigeons.

Cat among rats.

Man among minstrels and thieves.

That man is Rassilon, dripping backwards, his wet bones bunched like exotic carrots under that purple robe as they rebuild themselves from flesh assumingly repurposed from nearby matter. Her... father.

She looks down at the floor again, realising she's missed it, in the semi-dark.

There is another man, naked at her feet, stained, she presumes, by the climbing blood. Or perhaps a wound.

He is shivering and unconscious.

The only man she would scream for.

As a figure in guard's silvers sprints across from the hall she came from, she cries out.

"You! Get me Medical, now, quickl-hmph!"

One silver glove plunges down her throat in a surge of liquid.

Another rips the Egg of Law from her neck, leaving a red dent.

And as she is dragged away, one tight cheek of her bared rump squeaks and bumps intermittently across the smooth tiles.

Weee-heee-eek.

Weee-heee-eek.

Weee-heee...


	2. ch 01

Chapter One: Red-Handed

"Look there, my Lord...," a voice squeals, "... he's waking up."

But the screech of a bucket being scrabbled over by small feet is the first thing the Doctor hears.

"What happened? Did the Ceremony turn out well?" he breathes, pushing up against the wall to a sitting position, "... forgive me, but I don't remember leaving..."

Eyes turn on each other, Borusa's and a helmeted guard's, trading worrying glances of blue daylight and silver metal unibrow, respectively.

"... you didn't leave. You had to be carried out after collapsing during your official reading of the Last and Final Remarks Regarding Induction of New Officials. Just a small little tear, really, but it forced us, with Flamina's consent, to delay the rest of the proceedings. How do you feel?"

The Doctor rubs his gritty eyes and yawns.

"I don't remember doing that."

He reaches up to check his head for lumps and bits of dried blood, but Borusa slaps his hand away with an exasperated exhalation about a bruise.

"I wouldn't go touching things now..." she mutters, standing on a suspect wooden pail as she pushes his rabbit hair away from his temples, "... the fall gave you quite a concussion. But now you're awake, it ought to heal fairly quickly, so if you can put on clothes without falling, do so. Then go with the guard to the Lesser Inquiries Room. I need to discuss something with you about a new issue that's fallen into our lap and all my materials are there. Take care, Doctor."

As Borusa leaves, the Doctor blinks once, twice, holding the movement so he can make sense of the words floating in his head.

His lips move without him.

"Borusa, room, clothes..."

He slides to the edge of the bed.

Then he looks over, and...

The helmeted guard, a woman, sticks out a hand and presses him back into place upright, propping his wobbly frame easily as though he were a fancy layer cake in a spring form pan.

"Now, now, Lord Borusa told me to keep you still as much as possible, and she strictly forbid any bending over... remember you're not strong... like me," the brown-haired female guard's young, smoky voice mutters from the helmet as she bends to rummage in a plain chest stained a rich, dark cherry, "... I'll find you something decent- you just hold tight."


	3. ch 02

Chapter Two: Red Inquisition

Thirty minutes later, the Doctor's fingers clamp nauseous and white on the Lesser Inquiries Room door.

"...I'm here," he says, carefully pushing the door a bit further ajar before sticking a naked foot in to keep it that way. "I think the guard has left me. Don't really want to turn around to be sure. When did we get her? She's creepy."

Borusa smiles at her little table, not bothering to get up.

"Take a seat, fool boy," Borusa says, gesturing to a wooden chair, "you and your bare toes, both."

She then lays a paper down, something about ... disappearances? Climate change?

His eyes blur as he tries to focus on the page, but Borusa slides it away from him, watching his reaction.

"Not that, not... yet. I sense you have a question. Best be out with it boy," she says, tapping his hand with the pointer in her fingers, because her small hand is too short to reach his, "with that look on your face, you haven't all day, let alone the hour or so it would take for this. I'll hurry it up. Go ahead and ask."

She smiles, turning her eyes down at him.

Strange.

The Doctor blinks again, thinks better of shaking his head to clear it, and then sinks back into the chair, slowly tilting back against the high rest for a moment before opening his eyes and speaking.

"...where is Koschei? Last time I checked, he was miserably in love. He should have been there last night. Why wasn't he? Or..."

He jerks forward just as two guards come in, the one from before and another one.

"Surely he wasn't one of those disappearances, Borusa... hey!"

Both guards plaster their hands to his head and chest, holding him down and covering his mouth.

But not before he manages to catch a finger between his teeth.

He chomps it. Irately.

The guard he bit stumbles back, striking the wall with their helmet and breaking the opaque glass. The impact reveals a left eye, dark-glazed and gunning for his bowels on a spit.

The guard with the broken helmet jumps up from the floor and rushes him, but he shoves his fingers in the break in the mask, touching cold skin.

Cold, and white.

As he touches the Flesh, something bursts in front of him, an explosion of snow and red boots. A little girl running near a frozen lake. A scared little girl. Running.

He tries to call to her, but suddenly he feels monstrous fingers grip him by the spine, lifting him one-handed.

Inevitably, his flying spine crashes into a nearby wall, followed by the rest of him.

"The Doctor doesn't ask for directions," he murmurs, sinking to the floor like a brick of old custard pudding.

And then the lights go out.

How predictable.


	4. ch 03

Chapter Three: The Blue Lacuna

The Doctor opens his eyes to a rush of iced air on his cheeks.

The cold touch of the breeze, though pleasant, bites him, burning his skin with the fire inherent in every long winter.

He opens his eyes.

He can't feel his toes to curl them on the slide-y thick black ice.

Clouds melt overhead, buffeting the scene on the lake with snow.

Covering them both.

A bright figure made of incandescent blue feathers and steely eyes and sharp beak, held up by pawing talons pressed flat to the ice.

His partner, it appears, is a giant bluebird.

He stares at it, forgetting his bluish toes now in the dull brilliance of the frozen streams cascading down like frosty curtains.

He takes a wingtip in his strangely furry glove, and curls the morbid covering gently over the primaries; there is a bit of bone in there, careful- we mustn't break it.

His eyes curtail themselves, hoping not to catch another glimpse of the furry thing on his hand.

But look he does.

Gray.

Soft-bristled.

Wizened.

Furled toward itself.

"My kingdom for some proper mittens!" he calls out to the giant bird, whose visible eye rounds on him disapprovingly like Sauron in an apron, a taut feminine presence in blue, selfish and in communicado with the whole of some wrinkled, wispen world of wonders.

It doesn't take much to begin.

Just a flick of his monkey's paw, a twist on his naked heel, and they are dancing.

He spins the big bluebird round, tucking her body against himself so that she must release a wing to stay upright.

She flings into it, swirling flamenco spiral after flamenco spiral to his tapping, clapping swing.

As he tosses her upward in a catch, his reflection on the black ice decides it for him; yes, he's still quite dapper in formal blacks... even if he doesn't have any shoes.

Suddenly the echo of a projectile bang alights on the snowy heights, hurtling in a beam toward them.

One wing folds around him in a blast of warmth, and a crunching pounds through his ear.

A small arch of dark red liquid flutters out in an arc from the wing, but it pushes him, flinging his rag doll body like a paper ball to the far shore.

The bird cocks her head at him, a blue helmet of ruffed feathers set by a lovely gold jewel.

Then the ice splits in little waves of cracks that crawl toward him, larger and larger fronds of interrupted shatter carving their way across the fracturing lake like hounds toward his overhanging toes.

Wanting very much to keep those little piggies, he pulls up, wiggling a bit, then sinks into the snow on the bank, and groans, shoving his hand through his rabbit hair so hard it knocks away his lovely headgear, an elegant black beaver.

"Darling," he murmurs to the receding cracks and beneath them, his missing bluebird, "... don't let them dent my topper!"

Then, before the little icicles can form on his eyelashes and bore him to suicide with stories of the war, he scoops up his hat with a swaggering backhand and casts it, skidding fair out, just in time to catch what's left of the rather unfortunate fishing hole before it ices over again.


	5. ch 04

Chapter Four: Am I Blue?

"All hail the blinking blue button..." the bedraggled woman in the cast mutters in a low, mocking voice, enunciating each consonant with enough force to make her dribble spit.

The woman in white ignores her, taking out a notebook and checking a few boxes instead.

"Now Miss, your physician is on vacation, so I will just have to be your attendee for the moment all right? You'll be happy you came here, just sit there and I'll bring your medication."

The dirty-blonde woman in the cast applies clean fingernails to its rough wrapping, dragging each digit down the length of the plaster, making rents.

The woman in white breathes in and breathes out again hard, hard enough to make it seem as though she may be a little frustrated. Good, good. Everything is fine. She is a nurse, this is... she is a nurse.

"It's time to take your medication, my dear..." the nurse says flatly, whipping out a thermometer from the white, white wall and stuffing it in the casted woman's mouth.

"Oh my, I'm afraid I'll need to step out and call him back in..."

"And leave me to unwrap my own presents? That's rude... ," says the woman in the cast, nipping like a feral dog as she applies her prominent, clean, white teeth to the strips of bandage dangling from her plastered arm. "And 'he's' not my Doctor. My Doctor's a burglar. And a magpie. A hero and a clown. But mostly an idiot. And 'I' am the one who labels his nuts and bolts, and cooks his turkey, and does his laundry, and looks after his strays, not a little brown mouse like you. You should run, little mouse. You and your doctor both."

Her gold-lit eyes float over the nametag on the nurse's uniform, reflected in the mirror, and she touches her tongue to the tips of her teeth suggestively as she reads,

"Influences, Jar."

She laughs aloud as she stares after the nurse's retreating form through the bars on her door.

Then she remembers a couple of rhymes, and makes a sandwich of them, calling out through the bars.

"For I'll huff and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house down- the better to eat you with my dear and oh look! This is me..." she growls, candid and snarling against the bars, though the nurse is long gone. So she continues her lunch, offering a bite to the one who's still watching, curling her fingers around the steel and grinning her white teeth like lights from behind calculating, juicy lips, mongrel and plump.

"Dinner Lady."


	6. ch 05

Chapter Five: White Christmas at the Ivory Tower

The Museum, a beacon of enlightenment situated on Gallifrey's white northern cliffs, has never before seen the like of the great big box wrapped in shiny foil now sitting on its front step.

Another 'box' it knows well dropped that thing by.

So heavy, it is.

Big, boxy box.

Like two people could fit inside it. Why would two of those silly mortals want to do that?

Sleeping in a people-sized box.

It's absurd.

Well, better to ask the spinny blue rectangle of a harlot that left them here, in that shiny strange box, with that floaty paper thing tied to it by a ribbon. How dare one of those pesky mortals kick some strange shiny box out on the Museum's front step!

Shameful.

And what is that shadow circling like one of those damn southern vultures overhead?

No! No! Don't...

Something white lands on a busted column, splashing softly.

Damn bird.

And it's that pesky Myrtlegull too.

Is it landing?

Oh skies above, it is.

The flight feathers of the annoying bird circle downward, elevating, flopping back, descending as the bird descends.

Perhaps it won't... land on the Museum. Perhaps it...

Yes, the strange shiny box!

Yes yes, bird, land there!

LAND. THERE. BIRD.

The shadow thickens like a miracle over the shiny box.

The shadow falls, straight down, gliding strangely downward, over the strange box, strangely.

Almost not like a bird at all.

The Museum is certain of it.

The bird-thing is white, and monstrous... and as its one eye peers down at the big big big goldish bow tied snugly atop the shiny box it now is stomping about on, it snaps up the tag in its beak and stares back at it, as if remembering the words.

Good Boy.

Merry Christmas.

Do not open till...

...

The stupid creature! It then drops the card and claws at it, flattening its talon across the words, almost... as though its tiny subdivided lentil of a brain comprehends.

Then the beak.

Oh, the horror!

Peck.

Peck.

Peck.

Peck.

The terror in that turn of head! The malicious, plotting twist of neck as it pounds out its relentless chorus of resounding misery on the box, right on that blinding bloody no good tinfoil paper, in a catchy beat of four.

Peck.

Peck.

Peck.

Peck.

...

Peck.

Peck.

Peck.

Peck.

...

Peck.

Peck.

Peck.

Peck.


	7. ch 06

Chapter Six: The Big White Telephone

"Here," a sweet voice mumbles through the bars, "I brought you some water."

Ice splashes wetly across the Doctor's face, and his head smacks back, hitting stone.

He blinks away the water, staring as the naked white skin of his lovely not-daughter parades itself around, like an armor suit of meat, on the wrong side of the bars.

"Do you remember when I made you your pretty dress? It was your birthday...," he murmurs softly, averting his gaze with a hand, as if trying not to stare out to sea.

Flamina's white fingers wrap around the bars, curling loose, then tight. They pull.

The thick bars rattle free with a clang and no small bit of dust, clouding up a bit.

"Don't tell me what to do, Daddy. We're too old for this game," she breathes, tossing the wall of bars and stone behind her, causing a racket somewheres.

"Well you can tell your mother I don't like the furniture. Bit too garish. Needs addressing."

He mutters it under his breath, watching her watch him as he plucks at the dirty blue bathrobe that's all they've dressed him in.

Flamina smiles, and draws her ankle back, dipping her foot so smoothly along the floor, touching toes to the stones.

Her foot then returns to its former position, and finds his solar plexus, kicking him there, in the middle of his ribs.

The blow scoots him toward the back wall and instinct curves him in on himself, and so he holds his arms close to his lower chest.

"You're not yourself today. But we could still be friends. What say you put this behind us, and we can get some ice cream? Just tell me where the TARDIS is, and-.. glug!"

Her fist shoves violently into his stomach, forcing a little trickle of blood to come up and bubble between his shivering teeth, spraying all over her hand.

"Flamina?" he says softly, looking up at her with red smudges on his face.

So calm. As if he knows... But he can't. He can't! He... can't know. He... must not...

He knows. He has to. How? How did he find out? It was... perfect.

Despite herself, her fingers unbuckle themselves from that fist and slacken, riding limply along her lower thigh. Dimly she can feel her face beginning to revert, losing cohesion temporarily. If he sees her now, the way she really looks...

"You're not really a clown, are you, Doctor?" she asks, looking down at him.

But his head has lolled.

He is asleep.


	8. ch 07

Chapter Seven: White Paper

Flashback.

"...ah, yes, yes- I'll just be in for a moment. I'll call when I'm done."

Kenny waves off the guard, watching as the silvery figure, lithe and helmeted, departs from view down the corridor.

He slides his finger along the locking mechanism, recently installed, waiting with his finger to his chin as the door beeps open.

He cracks his neck to the left, to the right.

Checks the list board in his hand.

He steps inside.

"Silver and cold, like before..." he muses as he looks around again.

But this time, he doesn't have to marry a conspicuous blast door.

Or rush out the gates in a gift of borrowed clothes.

The corners are the same.

The boring walls.

The shiny floor.

But from one of those corners, the shadow of a crumb that shouldn't be there.

Kenny turns to call for the guard, his shoulder-length silver hair flashing its waves as he spins.

He opens his dark olive lips, then shuts them again, with a sigh.

The guard left.

Of course.

He steps closer to the left corner, the offending location.

The big dent is still there from where he pitched the left half of door.

And further down, a hair of possibility.

For his feet are turning cold in the draft coming in from the tiny, tiny crack in the supposedly solid wall.

"A hidden passage... I take it this won't end well for me then," he murmurs, recalling how he died in a sandy cave a couple of weeks ago.

He looks down quickly at his boots before pushing against the crack.

Ice is forming on the rounds of his boot-toes.

Lovely.

He pulls open the strange sliding door now revealed by the sliver of creeping cold air, and steps inside to find...

"It's you? But you're... not this way. Not... this! Agh!"

A pale hand crawls out from the opening, and shuts the door again, sealing the secret of Kenny's disappearance away with a tidy little laugh.


	9. ch 08

Chapter Eight: White Flag Sale

"Hello, Silver Helmet," the Doctor murmurs from the floor of his cell, one hand covering his blood-smeared mouth, one hand pressed against the stones in the wall behind him.

The guard from earlier, he thinks. He recognizes her slim build, the tone of arrogance hiding in her unsettled carriage.

Two slender hands reach to shift the silver helmet, removing it cleanly.

"So, how many of you are there? Did he give you Dental? It's really quite important to get good Dental, in the current economical climate. Why I remember when the Brigadier dragged my third body off to the dentist to get my toothache sorted- kicking and screaming, as I recall... next thing I know, my little Amelia saw a particular painting in some gallery somewhere, and here I am!"

Jennifer Lucas, the Flesh from the Factory, stares back at him from the sleek silver lines of the new guard's uniform. She lifts her leg, planting her booted foot in his face.

"You look like you could do with a rest, Doctor," she breathes, smiling widely, her long hair tied back in a utilitarian ponytail.

"You're not well, Jennifer... I could help you," the Doctor says, spitting some blood and a tooth from a corner of his mouth.

Jennifer grins sweetly, showing her teeth as she crouches beside him.

"Without your TARDIS? I doubt you're in much of a position to bargain with me. The Valeshard leaves me to my own devices. It's better for him that way. It could be better for you, if you'd just join us."

A weak laugh escapes the Doctor, but then he sighs brokenly, perhaps at the twinging of a rib.

"You don't know what you're missing! I bet he didn't give you Dental did he? That naughty boy, I shall have to reprimand him next time we..."

Jennifer falls forward like a skydiver, smushing a finger to his mouth.

"I wouldn't say such silly things. Especially when I might decide to help you if you're nice to me."

"Working with Rory... working with the Valeshard... I thought you were Big Strong Jennifer and didn't need anybody! But well, my mistake. I looked a gift horse in the mouth, after all."

The Doctor smiles, pointing to his lip. With a shriek, Jennifer bloodies it again, extracting another tooth with the force of her blow.

"I don't bargain, dear child," the Doctor mutters softly, allowing a bit of the shadow to steal across his face, "... I trade."

Jennifer spills out of her silver suit, her face deforming as her neck pools toward him, like a band of hot taffy.

Then abruptly she pulls back, sinking, her shoulders slumping as she jerks herself back into human form, and settles her hair.

Her fingers melt and fix the wall her copy of Flamina destroyed, moving bits of stone and metal bar back into place here and there.

"Don't... talk about Rory like he's some disposable tool. That's 'your' talent," she breathes, turning her back to him as she walks out, "... You're the one who moves people like chess pieces. I was watching you, in the Factory. In the dark. You don't even realize how much anymore, do you? Goodbye for now Doctor. And my offer still stands. Merge with me and I'll take you to the TARDIS."

The Doctor sniffs a stream of blood back up from his broken nose, avoiding a nasty scene under the rim of his nostril, and the taste of himself, for the moment... before he speaks. "I can't... do that, Jennifer. I'm not Flesh. I'm sorry."

Jennifer stares at him, cocking her head like an owl, then chortles so hard her hair turns white and sprawls out from her head like a volley of sudden tree limbs. When she is herself once more, she opens her mouth too wide, her fluid jaws uncracking of bone, stretching as her tongue rolls out and smacks his face again, knocking his eyes back and sending him to dreamland.


	10. ch 09

Chapter Nine: White Cliffs

The Doctor opens his eyes to the stark sea wind, setting his paintbrush to the canvas.

Following the horsehair, a line echoes over the rough tarp, dark black and thick with the oils of the paint.

His bare elbow twitches; he looks down. A little flyspeck has landed on his skin.

He shakes his arm, bending his whole shoulder inward. Avoiding the mistake he might make in the picture if the fly decides to stay and brush up on his Jules Victor Clairin.

The fly itches along, closer to his humerus, demure little feet plodding nonchalantly forward.

Fastidious.

Carefree.

He shuts the tiny insect out and continues with the line.

The brush skirts along, flowing like fluid across the canvas.

A nice, tidy line of drippy black.

Soon there will be leaves instead of tallow.

In her hair.

Tallow.

In her hair.

He paints, dipping here and there into the other colors.

A dab of blue here, a touch of yellow there. A spot of orange and brown.

Leaves in her hair.

The narrow bent-mustard and tan of dying grasses.

At his feet, winds hound their doggerel, mad with hunger, sprinkling the piss of cold across his skin.

The fly at his elbow, as he watches, slows and freezes up, trumpeting tiny icicles down onto the hot of his flesh as it falls.

He reaches down, brushing the dead fly away.

The truant brush slips over the canvas like a rampaging stallion, ruining the face with a dark line.

He smiles up, then, away from the portrait.

For the lady is walking.

He watches her white feet creep toward the cliff, her legs, her body, her breasts, pearls sheathed in blue.

Her crown of leaves springs out from her gold-framed pearl face as she runs, so slowly.

Her toes crunch branches and leaves.

She reaches the edge, the water swirling far below.

And falls, twisting to catch his dark eyes as she plummets.

He smiles again and touches an aching rib. It isn't broken. It never was.

But there 'is' a hole there, and the bones of his naked torso are poking through it. He sticks his hand into the hole briefly, waggling his fingers around in the goo.

Black paint comes out, oozing onto his black trousers.

For relief from the pain and the paint, he swipes the oily medium on his trouser leg, stretches the leg out beyond his other's bent knee, then returns to the now-blank canvas.

He dips his brush into the black paint, to begin the work again.

But in the back of his mouth, his teeth grind as if fashioning a sword.


	11. ch 10

Chapter Ten: White Ladies

The white of Kenny's hand slides across his own forehead, finding all the crevasses in the smooth Time Lord skin. Finding all the cracks.

Like a spider spinning a cocoon, his fingers shift across his old skin, studying. Surveying.

Weighing.

With a laugh he presses hard, smushing the smooth olive lips against the sharp olive nose with his fine olive palm.

The real Kenny's body swings back indelicately, a swaying doll.

His laughter echoes hollowly through the frozen storage room.

"Rather like meat on a hook, don't you think? After all, it takes Time to freeze them."

In the doorway behind him, a shadow lingers, its eyes green holes in the icy dark.

"If you're done?" it prompts, annoyed. "I'll be getting hungry soon. Check the Gardens for intruders and then report back to Borusa for debriefing. I prefer to take my lunch alone... but if you hold up the works any longer, I may invite you to dinner. Mother will be irritated, but... I don't give a damn."

The shadow slurps away, leaving bare footprints in the snow on the floor.

"Of course, Father," the Kenny Flesh says, inclining his head toward the empty doorway.

Then Not-Kenny moves to the door of the pre-freezing room, shuts it.

Ice sparkles free of the frame and shatters on the floor, sprinkling bits of white across his freshly booted feet.

"Mother will not be pleased, indeed. Who does he think he is?" he murmurs as he steps into the next room, "There's not even anything in there. Statues..."

A square of black stone statues, all women, decorates the center of the space, flanked by more of the Valeshard's frozen dinners, shoved in tight against the walls.

First in the square, the effigy of a young Gallifreyan woman of 170 or so. Large eyes. Large lips. Short hair. Cute. Vulnerable. The second corner is a human woman... teacher type, with a tidy jaw and a fierce gentleness to the eyes. Upper right is President Romana, with her long hair and her quirking grin and her childish face. The last, upper left, is another human, a round-faced slip of a thing with never-ending legs, pouty lips, freckles. Large, wide eyes and a button nose.

Disinterested, Not-Kenny moves on to the next room. This room is smaller, lined with yet more of the frozen Gallifreyans. Some of them children.

"No imaginary monsters in here," Flesh Kenny murmurs softly, making a show of looking around each statue in the three-figure pyramid adorning the center of this room.

Ice covers the walls, floor, everything; a sleepy facsimile of rich green ivy. Flesh Kenny looks down at the ground near the first statue of the three, a curvy, sisterly woman with shoulder length hair, wearing a vest. Another of the Doctor's pet humans. There is no ice at her feet. Strangely, as in the room before this one, the ice seems to stop just before it reaches the effigies.

"Gives me the shakes," he murmurs, before laughing and running his eyes and hands along the next statue, checking for disturbances in the cool white stone.

The statue is the second leg of the three-sided pyramid, and depicts the countenance of a sturdy, confident woman, full-bodied and regal in jodhpurs and endless waves of curls. Her full lips yawn a knowing smile.

Ah, River Song. How could he forget? Pompous wench. Always putting on airs.

Not-Kenny laughs again, cracking his neck as he comes to the final statue in the room.

A slip of a thing, barely a woman at all. But strong. Nanny-like. Long hair slightly past the shoulders. Suspecting eyes that curl with a knowing laugh. A bustle gown and bonnet. In her hand, a leaf clutched tightly to the bodice.

Frost is curling all around him, all over the frozen dinners with their terrified little beady eyes staring out so placidly from the ice.

Everywhere but the statues. Idly, Not-Kenny steps into the last room, the smallest.

No frozen dinners, but in the center of the room, a last remaining statue.

Another young woman with a round pouty face and shouldered hair, he reasons, shaking his head as he walks around it, admiring the tight turn of buttock only partially hid by a scoop of ancient vestment. Plump lips like slivers of juicy melon engulf the mouth, and the sea seems to sound from doll eyes overmade to seem larger in the mirror.

She is carved not of colored stone, this one, but of ice. Clear ice, too, as if someone couldn't decide what to call her.

Or was still deciding.

And there is a yellow rose in her hand, dropping petals on the floor.

One, two, three.

Two are already on the ground. A third is about to fall, teetering on the brink of oblivion.

"Hrm. Maiden in the ice. Looks like someone 'has' been in here, but they seem to have left," he says, taking the rose and bending to pick up the petals. "I ought to tell the Valeshard. I ought to... but... for some reason... my memories of Kenny are quivering in the back of my..."

Not-Kenny shakes himself again, not having meant to say the last bit out loud, then walks back out the way he's come, careful to take a last peek before shutting the door.

And as the door closes on her, a sound emanates from the final, small room.

Where she waits.

-krrr.

Kleek.

The image of an angel, as they say...


	12. ch 11

Chapter Eleven: White Rabbit

"No, no, stupid Arthur!" the Doctor mutters in his sleep, "...you're supposed to duck the..."

He flails, waving violently around; his hand strikes something, smashing two nails and a finger.

Skrrrr...

Skrrrrrrrr...

Skrrrrrrrrrrrr-brak!

Bluk.

Something heavy lands on his face, impounding his nose and holding his upper lip at a dangerous ransom.

He bites his tongue against the pain and reaches up, opening his eyes on the delightful rectangle surface of the wall bricks, recently vacated from its gritty mooring, now balanced precariously over top of his slightly fractured nose.

His taking in a shallow breath drives the poor abused brick to shatter in two; the two separate bits then slide to the floor like two drunkards celebrating in the wrong direction.

"...brick."

Annoyed, he looks down at the dead stone brick in amazement, contemplating the flick of gold beaming up at him from among the dust and pieces as he applies his free thumb to his accosted nose.

"Heigh-ho, heigh-ho!" the Doctor exclaims, quoting some random dwarves as he picks a thick gold key out from the stony remains, "it seems this face is good for something after all!"

"Hey guard!" he calls out, impressed as he walks to the wall that came off previously.

Once there, he reaches his hand through the bars of his cell and waves his prize about, testing the water for fish.

"What's this bloody key for?"


	13. ch 12

Chapter Twelve: Black Gold and Blue Murder

The dream comes stiffly to him that night, like the scar-twinge of an old wound in the rain.

His pale hands touch water.

The water, pitch and thick with sludge, reviles him, rejecting the foreign body-ness of him, pitching him back toward the beach with a mighty huff, as though a fly landed in its soup.

He makes fists and tries again, diving a little further this time. Beneath the gnashing black oil, his sharp eyes find the way to her, feeling out the blueness in the dark.

"I'll find you anywhere!" he cries, his arms outstretched, and waving wild through the muck, his body a wobbly arrow, pointing to the deep.

Then the Doctor pushes his arms out, diving farther.

Shoving the black oil away from his body, he shoots down, after the blue and the bubbles, her fish tail flying away from him, a red balloon.

As his whole being scrabbles after her, he feels the waters lift him up, pulling him from her, only to dump him in no great ceremony back on the beach.

But he kicks off his shoes, and wades in again, the bare, thick black water lapping at his naked toes, repelling him.

So he just smiles, sways forward, and welcomes the tide.


	14. ch 13

Chapter Thirteen: Maybe Black Mesa

The Doctor rubs his eyes and stares at the hole in the stone brick wall above him. He's used to sleeping on the floor now, with all the dust and...

"Are you coming in? Because I can't come out. Presently. A state which, with your help," he says to the inordinate amount of dust inside the brick's former home, "I hope to rectify sooner rather than later. So come out, come out, wherever you are!"

The fuzzy dust begins to crawl down the stone bricks toward him, a low, creeping dust bunny.

"Well now, do I need a bookmark or some lemon-scented spray?"

The dust grows up, flowing in a swirl around his hand.

Solidifying.

"I think for your sake it's lucky I don't have either," he murmurs, his head close to his chest as he scrunches his face against the wall, unwilling, for the moment, to move himself.

He looks at his hand.

There is a black cell phone in it.

He shoots his eyebrows up, respectfully, then dials a number.

"Namaste!" he quips, lovingly, into the mobile. "Is this The Library?"


	15. ch 14

Chapter Fourteen: Black Powder Plot

The Doctor whispers into the phone.

"So are we still on for four o' clock cribbage? Good, good. On to other matters. The Namaste Nerada are here, you remember your cousins don't you? They're being held prisoner. I'm sending you coordinates."

"1, 17, 43, 05, 11. Those are the coordinates of something vital to your mission. Should you choose to accept it. Always wanted to say... ah well, never mind. Right then! Once you get there, dive in and aim for the stone cell. I''ll send you a picture on Facebook... right... about... now! There! It's under the heading, Ain't No Party Like a Time Lord Party. Got it? Good. See you here."

The Doctor shuts off the phone, flipping his sweaty hair away from his face, and the Namaste Nerada dust phone dissolves.

"Exhausting work, texting."

The dust says nothing.

"Ah, okay now. Do you lot do carrot and stick? Or are you strictly nuts and berries?"


	16. ch 15

Chapter Fifteen: Black Dragon

The key is tied to a string.

The string is made of dust.

The dust is made of little lives. Crawling, writhing, squirming little lives, so far away from their books and their quiet.

And they, those quiet little lives, are in the Doctor's hands, being tossed at the bars of his little stone cage repeatedly.

Toss.

Clang!

Toss.

Clang.

"Oh jellies I'm old. I'm losing my touch! Let's just try again, shall we? When one comes by, get into position. Your cousins will do all the work. When they get here."

He looks at his dubious watch, then tosses the key on the living string against the bars; finally, it catches, swinging round and falling down the other side of the wall with a satisfying clunk.

"Good," he breathes, encouraging them with a smile he's long since forgotten they can't see, "now I want you to extend the string beyond the guard station; make sure they see the key shining. When one of them starts to come round, drag your little dusty bums back here and I'll be waiting, playing dead. I'm good at that, you know. Playing dead. On with you now! Go on, it's all right. If they hurt you," he adds, smoothing out every muscle in his face so very slowly, "they'll just have to answer to little old me. Run along, do your bit. I'll be in here, nursing my signature Hollywood malaise. Although they didn't exactly love me at the Globe..."

He settles himself on the floor, in the wet bit of dark near the cot they gave him, and musses his hair up, his wide lips calculating the perfect pitch of a trembling moan, in case the string is missed.

"Now, whatever you do, team, don't kill them, and don't let them get the key... it won't be easy," he murmurs, before hanging his mouth open wide and slowing his breathing, "... 'cause there ain't no party like a Time Lord party."

Then with a last grin at the shadows, he closes his eyes to wait.


	17. ch 16

Chapter Sixteen: Hoist the Black Flag

"What are you doing in there! Get off the floor!"

The guard in silver bangs on the door, clanging a silvery baton against the bars of the Doctor's cell.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

Clang-bluk-clang-bluk.

Clang-bluk-clang-bluk.

Clang!

The key clicks in the lock. Old lock, old key.

Old cell.

Dank, dusty. Musty with old death smells.

"Oi! What is this?" the guard smirks, irritated at the audacity of the Doctor's fell hand, lying in the muddy dirt like that.

He kicks at the shadow where the Doctor is slumped.

But, his boot sticks there; he pulls.

"You! Let go of my foot you idiot! You're not allowed to play stupid games with us guards down here! I bring you food and this is how you thank... agh!"

The shadow crawls along his leg, sucking up the light. Darkness creeping and crumpling along.

And out of the darkness, five white fingertips and a hand.

"I'm sorry," the darkness says softly, parting to allow the face of the Doctor to appear as the man himself stands up, brushing off flecks of shadow that reattach to him in disconcerting, magnetized little streams, "... but these are hostage negotiations. Sleepy time."

The Doctor's too-pale face reaches down, running just beside the guard's.

The last thing the guard sees before the tiny black specks enter his helmet is a line of the stuff running from the Doctor's left eye.

He screams, and then the helmet visor fills with black.

The Doctor smiles a cardboard smile and steps over the man's body. Then he holds his hands out, turning them over and back again, staring at his palms.

"You could have warned me, you naughty things," he murmurs, mesmerized by the black swarm flowing over his fingers and under his nails, "It's a fine thing I'm pretty, or this would be the worst case of blackheads I've ever had. Thought I had bad skin before!"

He turns back to the guard on the floor, briefly, before leaving the cell door swinging.

"You really ought to get that dermatitis looked at by a Doctor... Ah well, time for my exit."

Once outside the cell completely, he shoves his body to the wall, playing Bond against the stone, with his finger poking upward like a gun.

Suddenly, sweat beads on his face.

"Didn't like that, huh? I know, I know, stupid joke. But I always wanted to do that bit. Hold on."

He holds his hand up to his nose, circling his gun finger round in a half moon. The Nerada swarm slips over his hand, growing into a glove over his fingers. He cups his ear.

"Sounds like Jennifer knows we've flown the coop. Work with me," the Doctor sends mentally, feeling the itch over his body of 'message received', "... there'll be several waves. I can feel them through the floor."

Then he shoves himself away from the stone wall, swinging his arm out with the Nerada in tow around his humerus area, swirling lopsidedly in irregular orbit around him.

Black flies around his wrist like a silk ribbon, careening forward, growing down his arm. Then the sharp onyx cloud whips the helmet off one guard as she rushes him from the corner.

"One down, several thousand to go! What's it going to be, girls and boys?" he cries to the crowd, gauging the response by the universal quotient of silence divided by footstep.

The Doctor places his foot to the right, toe to heel, pulling back his black arm to strike again.

"So many footsteps!" he says softly, grinning a mad grin with his wide open lips and his shining teeth glooming in the shade of the hallway leading to the stairs, "... it's going to be a long night."


	18. ch 17

Chapter Seventeen: Four and Twenty Blackbirds

Out in the corridor leaning to the central stair, Jennifer listens to her children's screams.

Her fingers touch the com unit on the side of her silvery helmet as she squirms it off with the other hand.

Pop... and out comes the soft little bumper between her brown ponytail and the rest of the world. She hasn't focused on her face in a mirror in a while.

She might today, she reasons, as she growls a low growl and applies her fingertips to the washed out stone of the hallway wall, a bit free of the annoying, phallically-preoccupied rainbow-coloured tapestries.

The wall blinks white, running white down its long length and around the corner, toward the infirmary.

Jennifer smiles, and flicks her ponytail slightly with little tilts of her head in anticipation.

"Now he's coming up the stairs!" she calls out happily, raising her hands up to command the white now spilling everywhere.

Her uniform grows into her; her skin becomes white. Her eyes gleam like pale marbles from her white Flesh.

Her arms grow upward with the streams of white birds now flushing up from the floors, from the walls.

A murder of white, monstrous crows, feathers splitting the air, great claws hacking through the breathing room.

She and they fly forward, attacking the shadow coming up the stairs.

The Doctor-shaped shadow stands so still in its grey dust armor, its grey clouds of arms writhing with black specks of swirling death.

Then the Doctor-thing takes a step.

His hand raises, if she can call it that... and with that raised hand, an unprotected place, an eyelid, flipping open above a serious green eye.

The eye finds her in the white and the dark, lolling onto her location like an easy little dart on a magnificent board.

She never sees the pale fingers of mere man creep around her, cupping her feathers, rising over her, with errant thumb poised beneath her little bird neck, quick to keep her calmed, complacent.

The fingertips curl, softening around her.

But they never reach her head to crush, or her neck to snap.

Instead, they tumble her, shut beak and all, down the Time Lord's throat.

The war is over before it begins.

He has won.


	19. ch 18

Chapter Eighteen: The Maiden of Blackbird Field

"How many are you going to make, Flamina?" Susan says softly, not looking up from the blue round rug her little elbow is propped on.

The older woman with long white hair flickers white all over, her silks resounding in cloudy hues as she sweeps her hair and silks from her knees, then plops another folded paper neatly on the blue rug.

"How many birds are there now, Susan?" Flamina asks, smoothing her white silks as she gazes at the Flesh of Susan, allowing even the flaps of her eyelids to lose their color and revert to the white white blankness of the Flesh.

The little dough face of the Flesh child stares up at her, pouty-lipped and wide-eyed in the light of the countless candles dimly showering the room.

"Nine hundred and ninety five," Susan answers with her usual pained quietude, "that means we only need six more to do it."

Flamina nods, and returns her fingers to a crease on the paper in her hands.

"Soon," she says, gazing down at the half-square of paper in her hand, "soon we will have a thousand paper cranes. For he is coming up the stairs."


	20. ch 19

Chapter Nineteen: Black Pudding the Younger

The Ice Room.

Former storage, full of succulent, frozen treats with eyes and limbs and unfulfilled potential.

His hands caress a bluish whitish face. The only one in here, the first of his little meals.

Small, chubby a bit. Button nose. Dribbly nostril caught in the freeze.

"An appetizer, before the rarebit... splendid!" he murmurs, grabbing the little chin, positioning his wrist bones just so to snap off a morsel or two from the skull. It's so nice when the little chunks fracture off and shatter on the floor.

"Touch that child," a voice breathes behind him, warming the air with tiny sprinkles of ordered chaos, "and I'll touch you."

The Valeshard turns around, the little boy's chin in his twisting hand like a tiny miniature dancer.

"I hardly think 'you're' one to lecture 'me' on the wrongness of inappropriate touching, Me!" the Valeshard moans delightedly, flustering his hands about around the frozen child's round face, "Besides, when was the last time we dated someone over 100?"

His grey tongue flicks out; he bites it. Black blood oozes like pus over his dying lips, and he smiles.

The Doctor walks out of the shadow of the entry doorway and smiles his 'own' little smile.

"I'm not the one who slept with Jack. Am I, Zagreus?" he says, looking away from the Valeshard and crossing to stand before the single statue in the room, "I'll be taking that shard of ice in my heart back now, mind."

The Valeshard grins again, this time showing rotting teeth and yellow gums thick with pus.

"Aren't you? But what makes you think the little boy who lied can take anything from me?" he breathes, coughing on the frozen child's blue lips, "... you didn't kill Rassilon you know," he adds, setting a finger along his lips and licking before applying the digit to the statue of Rose's bosom, poking at her left breast.

The Doctor ignores him, focusing instead on the small child turned blue with unnatural entropy; the round chin still has fingerprint marks of black, like ink stains.

He goes to the boy, dabs his finger in his mouth, and wipes away the stains with his thumb.

"Much better. You were saying? Sorry, I was busy doing important stuff."

The Valeshard brings his hands together, one breath, two. Another. Soon, he is air-clapping in the cold.

"Time to die, little boy," he whimpers with a theatre mask sob, "I rather think you've worn your welcome."

He looks around, kicking idly at the statue's foot, demolishing a yellow petal with the toe of his black shiny shoe, grinding it into the ice.

"Why are you wearing a blue bathrobe anyway? Did you kill Rassilon in it? Well, I hate to break it to you Sunshine, but he's not dead. Are you going to say something else, or has the metre expired?"

His face grows longer, angled; his green-black eyes sparkle blue. His skin turns bright and warm, his structure melting into that of the immortal First Lord President of Gallifrey- Rassilon of Prydon.

But the Doctor is staring at the yellow smudge.

Stumbling back a half step, he clings to the statue of Rose's elbow and lowers his head, his searching brows crossing in adamant denial, as is their usual habit. But he... can't... surely he didn't... did he...

Did he?

Did he?

... did he?

Did...

He...

Kill?

Rassilon?

But then, who is... that... standing there...

Didn't he?


	21. ch 20

Chapter Twenty: Black Pudding the Elder

Flashback.

His fingers lace along the lines of the Right.

In his mind, he can remember how it felt to use it.

Cold metal encasing his fist, crackling in his hands with raw power; the power to bend stars to the will of men. A power he utilized today to rid the universe of That Woman.

Two birds with one stone fist.

And it is inside its case now.

It is safe.

Omega's other dangerous toy.

Slowly he draws himself away from the placid object, humming in its clear glass box.

Away from the lines.

The circles of rhythm and care, carved into its silvery architecture.

The articulate clockworks of a limb not severed.

He removes his feet from the inset foot panel and steps back into the dark of the small and vaulted archive room.

He raises his head, feeling the shadows trickling along the old walls like a hermit feels his dirt.

Suddenly, the expectation of a crunch... to interrupt the calm and smelt the dark and somber appointments of grey and red and gold lining the walls into something trying hard to be monstrous.

An intrusion.

It could be mildly fascinating, he thinks, trying for self-honesty and attaining something similar.

He does not look.

He never looks.

"I know it's you," he quirks nasally, pitching a bit higher than normal, to preserve the purity of the performance.

No sound, but stillness.

A late hour amusement, then.

Very well.

Taking three more steps, he puts more space between himself and the pedestal, more space between himself and everything that happened to-day, taking pains to drain his facial muscles of their color just so, like a milky girl.

He has seen a play or two, in his day; on the battlefield, in the squares, in the houses of law.

"Do I require some prop, or will you provide a cue for me to improvise some invisible instrument?" he greets to the empty air, careful not to sweep his arms like a rampaging second rate theatre rat.

He tips his left ankle slightly to the right, posing as if to take drink from a missing goblet.

"Why don't you come out of there, pest..." he calls, adding a touch of merriment to his smooth tones as his hunting eyes search the dancing shades of grey behind curtains and columns.

No answer, of a course, save the splendid silence and himself, beating double as he breathes in the dust of his private little archive.

But soon, but soon, a play of light casts itself, seeding a malevolent lantern across his back, the tip and tone of it cascading over 'that' pedestal, crawling beneath the only half-open case in the room.

As he considers this new trick, it fails him to consider the shadows that are no longer dancing, watchful as he is of the now quickened number burning up the pedestal where the Right Hand rests.

"That is not yours to play with, child..." he calls out, his tongue burning now with a subtle contempt.

The shadow climbs higher, covering the vague-scallop base of the pedestal, swallowing the case, dipping into the light inside the glass. Pouring over him.

Then he looks down.

His shadow, gone from him. Folded into the pie of his predicament like a trick napkin.

The nerves in his immortal toes stop crawling just long enough for him to notice the cold, and he gasps icy air.

But the shadow curls along his exhalation, following his breath back into his mouth like a host of black beetles craving flesh.

"Happy Birthday, Rassilon..."

The breath of his killer is heard, at last.

Footsteps echo outside his cocoon of dark, trailing away from the case.

And Rassilon smiles.


	22. ch 21

Chapter Twenty-One: All the Gold in China

"You didn't kill him, Zagreus..." the Doctor murmurs, clenching his teeth as he straightens and rolls his shoulders, stretching.

The Valeshard raises his eyebrows a notch as the Doctor talks further.

"... I did" the Doctor says, circling around the Valeshard like a shark, "I killed Rassilon. A long time ago. I helped his wife deceive him. That was the little death, for him."

"We know all this..." the Valeshard mutters, waving a hand dismissively, "...it's a bit like old hat." Turning round, he applies his tongue to the statue of Rose's bosom and licks.

The Doctor smiles, crossing to the little boy again and placing a hand on the child's frozen head. Petting him. Engraving the tight ice that used to be feathery soft hair on every nerve.

"Yes," he says, smiling a small smile, "'we' do."

The Valeshard stops licking and looks up over the ice Rose's shoulder at the Doctor with new and interested eyes.

"Stop that! I'm not like you! There's nothing left of you in here!" he croaks, putting a hand to his mouth in alarm, "You could join me, you know! We could do things!"

"Oh I don't think so, Valeshard," the Doctor breathes, walking toward him with slow, tidy, careful steps, "In fact I rather think this is curtains for you 'and' your snake oil... plus I got hungry and ate your pet carrier pigeon."

Covering his mouth, he coughs, flapping his tongue to rid it of the offending feather. Looking up again, he holds out a beckoning hand, palm to the side, thumb to first, readying for the snap.

Snap.

The Valeshard squints as the Doctor's shadow suddenly swirls up and over him, crawling around across his personal space as though the man has suddenly been consumed by a cloud of roiling pitch.

The Valeyard leans forward, nearly knocking over the statue of Rose in his haste to catch a glimpse of the madness happening inside the cocoon of Nerada.

Then the statue lingers on the brink.

Then it falls.

The carved Rose's face cracks along the bridge of her slightly flared nose.

Her lips erupt in little fractures.

Her fingers break from their hands and go walkabout, skidding across the floor like fallen skaters.

Her toes crack, shattering her legs at the knee and raining her body in bits down on the remnants of the yellow rose on the ground; the remaining petals are smashed into pale yellow sludge.

The Valeshard stares down impassively at the rose, transfixed for a moment as a bit of green eye finds its way out of the black cloud.

He fits his fingers to a chunk of icy thigh and picks it up, tossing it up and down idly.

"Oi!" he calls out to the Doctor, in a flash of thick and wobbling lips, "Loon Power Makeup! Are you coming out or am I coming in? Please, please tell me you're not undressing."

The cloud recedes, leaving the Doctor on the floor, his pale green eyes bleeding streams of Nerada. The bathrobe has grown, gaining an ombre trane of blue and creeping dark.

"Rose," he says quietly, looking at his hands, his fingers, now coated and crawling with billions of shadows, "I'm not hungry anymore."

"But I am," the Valeshard says, grinning as he snaps his own fingers and licking.

A shard of ice grows from the floor with a sound like shredding metal, shoving itself through the Doctor's naked chest. The shard crushes his spine twice, bending him backward then forward, sandwiching his organs until, like a thick, crunchy cricket on a fisherman's hook, he is doubly impaled.

Blood plops from his open lips and drips down his stuck out tongue, freezing in a lacelike pattern a hand's length from the floor.

Soon, his nervous system ceases its flailing, and the deadly rime clings on his skin like iron shavings on a magnet, frosting even the dark aureole of the Nerada behind him.

The Valeshard considers the scene, striding over to bend here and there, poking at the growing circles of frost echoing out from the Doctor's prostrate body with the toe of his shoe.

Then he turns a blithe foot on its blackened boot heel, to snatch up a toddler-shaped snack of a meal as he turns to the doors, for to exit the frost. Next he strikes a grand pose, full of triumph and Boss, popping tyke under arm, dancing back through the frames with a hand for the smarm as he sings a dark ditty full of bloody good prose, making certain the gate is left open for Rose.

"And the Whats down in Whatville, all frightened and small...

found their hero's big heart was two sizes too LOL!

Soon you'll all be eat up,

Yes, the joke is on you!

For I've finally stopped him

From winning.

Boohoo."


	23. ch 22

Chapter Twenty-Two: Two Gold Lilies

"You always were a sour grape, always singing to me off-key..." the floor quips awkwardly as the Valeshard turns and presses the door call button, shutting the sliding entry of the frozen Storage Room.

He turns again, raising the fingers of his free hand and waving them about in slow motion, over joyed to hear a familiar sound.

"Ah, Flamina. Or should I say, the underdone, undersalted, generally under-everything pretzel walking around looking like Flamina? Such a shame you didn't join the party downstairs," he says, dropping the frozen little boy on the slick cold ground. "I heard he ate Jennifer."

The child's head makes a little plopping sound, then slides to one side.

Flesh Flamina rises in a spin from the shiny silver material of the floor, in a spinning billow of white fabric and skin and raging hair, not bothering to retain any color.

"Didn't he tell you, Valeshard?" she murmurs, smiling without blinking, holding her hand out to the smaller form silent and clinging behind her leg, "... the cake is a lie."

The Valeshard kicks the frozen boy to one side, cupping an ear as the child smashes gently against the opposite wall. Then he bends down, and holds out his hands, cooing to the little Flesh girl.

"Now Susan, clever girl, come to Grandfather! You can live if you come! Come on! I got the milk machine up and running again!"

Her dark brown eyes plop wide and wet on him as she murmurs, "No. Doctor."

Then she runs, her hands outstretched, her mouth opening... body toddling forward like a wobbly cannon.

Her teeth latch on through the dark grey leg of his trousers, and he screams as her mouth grabs his shin for a second go.

"You little snot!" he spits, losing his balance, shaking his leg as she clings, "If Flesh didn't taste like horse glue you'd be an appetizer!"

"You... ate... one of us before? Barbarian," Flesh Flamina mutters, taking a step toward him, and another, and another, trailing silks.

The Valeshard raises his head and cries out, his voice a growling screech in the silence of the hallways.

"Rawrrrrrrgh! I will not stand for this rubbish! Ice is not the only tool at my disposal! I am chaos! I am...muflgrphmph!"

Flesh Flamina's hand is on his throat, silencing the outburst, her long, deft fingers a ring around his laryngeal prominence.

She squeezes, shifting her grip by dainty degrees.

He just snarls a smile.

Suddenly, the fluid slows in her feet. Her toes harden.

Like clay, her shins turn to rigid slabs, her skin becoming more gray nacre than turned Flesh.

She looks down; Flesh Susan is already gray and unmoving, lashed by two tiny arms to the Valeshard's black-bloodied leg.

As her thighs gray and turn stiff, Flesh Flamina lets her wings unfurl from the white materia of her back and snakes her free arm around his head, snatching a fistful of his hair and pulling his scalp back with the force of her grasp.

Dark fire pools in his glazed eyes as he stares, the blackening bulge of his vein-threaded face verging like a dry, bulbous fungus in a cave.

The Valeshard's teeth gleam like little candles as he grins.

Then he presses his hand to her chest, and a char mark blooms over her Flesh hearts, in a butterfly pattern.

Her limbs crumble off her, dusting the floor as they shatter in pieces.

The last thing she sees before her head turns to hard clay and slides, is Flesh Susan's little charred body, blowing away from the Valeshard's freed leg in spectacular ribbons of blackened ash, like a movie vampire caught by the sun.

The Valeshard catches her shorn face, holds it in front of him like a mask for a moment, thumbing the back of the smooth porcelain charm of what's left of her features; her alabaster eyes. Her mouth. Her thin lips. The nose he used to rub the wet from. Then he pockets the keepsake and walks straight down the hall, reaching up to rub idly at the burning bit of Susan that stuck in his tear duct.


	24. ch 23

Chapter Twenty-Three: The Golden Emperor

"FLAMINA!"

Not surprisingly, the nightmare breaks, but still the sound floats back to him on the scrawny scent of must.

This wouldn't be the first time dust tried to climb down his throat. Every time he thinks of that blasted party...

Blinking sleep away in little bits of grit that scratch across the lower round of his eyes, threatening to devein his orbs like an imperiled jumbo prawn, the Master forces himself awake completely, vying for oxygen in the dark rectangle of space before him just long enough to fool the universe into thinking he gives a damn.

Then he withdraws the invitation of his lips, bares his white teeth, bunches his shoulders as if for a bull-run, and invests his head into the top of his six foot odd prison of dubious pine.

Wood sprays around his emancipated blondness, sprinkling here and there and everywhere against his face, the sides of the box, his arms. His naked skin.

Oh joy.

They took his clothes, too.

Where is he, by the way?

He wraps strong hands around the splintering edges of his freshly-made exit and pulls, heaving out of his teetering tomb in a graceful leap.

He turns back as he's scuffing his hair, to suffer an idle glance over his handiwork.

His fingers dig into his scalp, massaging all the dust into the mess; It's like taking a sonic shower, only without the darts poster of the Doctor he always glues to every hotel bathroom.

Gravity pulls at his tender eyelids, and that strange and heavy liquid pools red-orange, tipping occasionally into the corners and draining down, leaving tracks in the dust stuck to his face.

Dust.

Ew.

His stubbled face jags downward, as he realises.

He'll pay more attention to the dust now.

It smells a bit like...

He sticks a finger in his mouth, wetting the remains.

"Who are you? Who... Flavia." he murmurs, wrinkling his nose. "...and a slight taste of living metal... where have I tasted that before..."

Blinking more carefully again, as to avoid more ridiculous blood tears, he coughs suddenly, gagging on the idea that has just tickled his nerves like a finger in a socket.

"Of course. That bloody bird. It smelled like this, the Hand. The Hand! But that means... Rassilon killed her... she must have opposed him, but... surely it wasn't just that. The man is calculating."

He speaks again, again to himself, and again to the cold pile of dust re-settling in his hair, newly-abandoned by his probing fingers as they lower, lost in the baggage compartment of his train of thought. Sifting the details like cake flour.

"Killed Flavia. The day Number Ten Son and I made nice, when I used the Gate to copy myself. And then the 10-point star diamond...the Doctor helped me find my answers... that the signal was placed in my head by Rassilon, when I was a child, when I stood before the Schism... The Doctor and I made up... I was grateful, ready to leave... so I protected my idiot and his pets from the old bastard... I told the Doctor to get out of the way, so I could shoot the diamond... burned a few years to force Rassilon back into the Time Lock with me... Not surprising he killed her, really. But what does it mean?"

He shoves his fist sideways, smashing into the rest of the coffin.

The wooden box cracks apart, its pieces flying away from him like little planes from a gorilla.

He reaches up again, planting his fingers in his scalp. His head feels slightly... off. The weight... there's a...

His fingernails dig through the dust, made muddy from his sweat.

Piling through the mud.

Squelch.

Squelch.

Squellll.

Near the part of his hair, in the back mud forest of his lower right scalp, the curve of a singular sort of object becomes known to his fingertips.

Round.

Cold.

Hard.

Hollow in the middle.

He closes his eyes and tightens his fist around it slightly, touching it with every nerve impulse in his hand, feeling it through. Imaging it. Mentally scanning, meticulous, as though running a manual diagnostic on a complex engine.

A shiver breaks over his spine, like the crest of a sullen ocean wave, icy and deep.

He savours it.

Then he opens his hand and looks.

"Oh my," he murmurs with a smile as he stares down at the thing in his palm, then the coffin, then the thing, then the coffin, back and forth, his eyes gliding between them.

Then he takes a step into the crumbling darkness, drawing deeply on the chalky scent of the air, each breath filled with particles that, perhaps, had once been a statue, a painting. An abysmally tasteful funerary urn.

They've shipped him off with the artifacts, you see.

He's been retired to the Northern Museum, the one the Artifacts were stolen from, on the North cliffs of Gallifrey.

Well. Well. Well.

As he stalks away into a crack in the wall, he fondles the rough edge of the fissure for a moment before stepping inside, out of the night. Into the dark.

Whoever stuck him in this overgrown toy box is going to pay dearly for that dream.

"What dream was that, again?" a woman's voice calls suddenly, halting his footsteps on their way half into the shadows.

A white figure with long white hair cascades out of the dark, a flower of silk and grin and pale lavender eyes.

He rubs his face, feeling his stubble scratch the skin on his fingers now roughened and raw from breaking out of the box.

The woman's fingers reach for him, taking his fingers and sucking away the dark reddish blood welling from so many cuts and gashes.

"Oh god, you bitch, you great white bitch, don't fucking do that again!" he murmurs, crushing her hand in his as he presses it against the large, sticky abrasion his cheek has become, "... I thought you'd... but who was... but then who... I thought... who gives a shit. You're here, damn you. Bitch."

She smiles and smacks the back of his head, then nuzzles her face in the cake of gray mud there.

"So you dreamed I was murdered, huh? That's not the one I had. Want to compare notes?" Flamina swishes her white Japanese robe against her bare legs.

The Master wipes at his eyes with a dirty elbow, scowling a threat at the swaying kimono as he reaches for it with an angry palm.

"... take that fucking napkin off. It's blocking my view of your milk things!"


	25. ch 24

Chapter Twenty-Four: The Gold-Guarding Grypes of Arimaspea

The Doctor knows he is dreaming, this time, as the black muck enters his mouth.

It fills his throat with cold resistance.

Once he would have flailed, his hands clawing the air, feeling and touching and grasping and clutching in desperation.

Doesn't matter. Nothing matters now. The muck has him. He's going to die.

It's all right...

He tried. So hard.

He tried.

It's okay.

Somewhere under the goo, his manhood tingles its distress.

"Bad, Pickles, stop that," he thinks, chiding it softly, "... just because we're naked doesn't mean you get to direct the movie. The theatre's closing anyway. The show is over..."

He leans back in the pitch-y slop, waiting for the goopiness to gush over him, to glop glop glop over his head.

The gloop sucks over his nipples, reaching little tar-hands over his tiny hairs... combing through all the forests of him slowly, like a marijuana mudslide.

"We didn't even get any popcorn... so hungry..." he murmurs, as the goo crawls.

It's over his considerable chin now.

He closes his eyes, relaxing further into it.

Blackness claims his upper lip, climbing him like a spelunker in reverse, mindless, exploring.

"Ah, well... soon I'll be a mudpie..." he thinks to himself.

But, the gloop swishes away from him then, pouring the opposite way as two long, sharp, multi-toed somethings clutch on his biceps and pull.

Easily, he is torn free of the muck.

Again, he is naked.

Again, he looks down.

"Hrm..." he breathes, his lungs suddenly free of the black stuff, "I'm clean, at least. But who are you?"

"See? I told you Santa was an idiot," the large black one on the left quips at the other one with a squiggling sarcastic caw as the two of them ease the Doctor's naked feet down onto the black muck.

The big white one on the right, however, merely cocks her white head at the Doctor and opens her long grey beak, then shuts it again with a tidy little clack.

Suddenly the Doctor is aware of his chest burning slightly... and the fact he's now standing on the muck instead of sinking in seems forgettable, somehow.

He reaches for the little burning pain on his skin... and finding a pin stuck over his left heart and poking through the flesh of his bare pectoral, he touches the odd bit of jewelry, caressing it, For Science, and discovers three curls of pointed leaves, hiding a splash of tiny berries.

The Doctor then unpins the broach from himself and holds it up to examine it in the light.

"Red light, green light... hrm. Ruby berries, emerald leaves. Oh! Holly Go Lightly!" he facepalms his forehead, then turns around and flaps his hands against his knees once or twice, smacking his fingers loudly against the naked skin and cartilage-caged bone.

"Well aren't 'you' a street vendor in Hyrule," the big black crow caws in irritation, unsettling the air for a moment as he begins abruptly to flap with a tad more vigor.

"Don't you two want this back? I don't need it anymore!" the Doctor huffs, out of breath with excitement as he holds up the pin.

The white crow flies close, but instead of clutching the pin, she turns her crow-head to the black crow for confirmation.

"It's yours, stupid..." the black one groans in thick sarcasm, quite a feat for a bird, and then rises slightly in the air in preparation for a hasty exit, "I'm going back to the Library. Come on, hayseed," he calls back irritably to the white crow as he makes for the horizon, "we've got other matters to attend to."

The white crow stares at the Doctor for a moment, before flying off behind her black companion.

After looking down and fumbling the pin back onto his chest with a wince, the Doctor tries to find the two crows in the sky, but the light from the sudden overhead sun obstructs his vision, blinding him for a moment or two and singeing his hair. Unseen by the Doctor, the two crows in the distance fade out and ultimately disappear in two puffs of dust, one black, one white.

Instinctively, he reaches up to cup the light, and his fingers grip the golden globe.

With a tug, he tears the sun from its cloudy moorings and down the hatch it goes; then he pinches his nose, and scuba dives backward into the muck.


	26. ch 25

Chapter Twenty-Five: The Golden Shadow

The Valeshard tips his hat to the dusted ladies, then sets himself down beside the knocked over statue of frozen boy-flesh, to begin his feast.

But as he applies his fingers to a nice, juicy section of cheek, placing the digits so carefully between forehead and chin, a strange thing happens.

His hands fall through the skull, striking the floor.

He looks down.

Suddenly, there is no boy at all and he is afraid.

He looks down again, just in time to see his own fingers cracking like the women's had, running through with little fissures, breaking into streams and rivers and seas of fractures, like feathers crawling away over his body.

Gold belches forth from between the landmasses of his skin like heat from a steam vent, licking at the frosty air.

Burning away the cold.

The ice.

The unnatural rime of all his precious chaos.

He blinks, to clear his head, and when he opens his eyes again, his eyes shout gold light with each flicker of his eyelids.

He looks down for the final time, and sees his own bald head. A golden robe, off-shoulder, pinned with a small green and red pin.

He smiles, and rises to his feet.

"Let's see if I remember where it is," he murmurs, then he plods barefoot down a random hallway, his naked toes making steaming the melt water, making ripples.


	27. ch 26

Chapter Twenty-Six: What's Gold for the Gander

The Other pushes the doors to the gala open with quiet hands, and rustles in, robes lilting.

He looks to the left and right.

Everyone, everything, stands still.

He could snap his fingers, will them to move, if he wished. But no.

Here, to the left of the doors, is Koschei, the Master, wearing the golden sash of Rassilon and waving his drink around, pointing with the royal three fingers at his girlfriend, the Doctor. Himself.

His younger self, the Doctor, is halted in his raise of the glass full of striped wine, the tumbler half way to his lips. The rosy stripes coupled with a mint inclusion do little for his complexion, which is the pale cream tone of the thoroughly bored.

But that is a lie. He knows, of course, that boredom has always been his favorite mask.

The Other turns himself, bending slightly behind himself, to peek through the glass as well, and see, from the safety of his memory.

Slowly now, he guides his eyes along the line of the glass, lingering only a moment over the rim before diving his senses through the stripes of liquid and spies...Her... through its unswirling presence.

White. All white. And not Flamina, either.

No.

Long hair like milk against cream porcelain.

Her face is twisted like a spin of sugar, and around her white neck...

Not an ellipse of shady lavender, but a tiny elongated cube.

A.

Blue.

Box.

A blue box.

The bluest box in the world.

His moon.

His stars.

The light of his universe.

Hanging around someone's neck like a thoughtless bauble.

His Universe.

His.

He's found her again.

His fingers twitch against his golden robe, as if atrophied.

One of his heels lifts to the toes, unbidden.

He closes his eyes.


	28. epilogue

Epilogue: What They Say about the Pen

"Do you watch me, little fly?"

A female voice rumbles above Clara's head, waking her up.

Clara opens her eyes, scrubs her long brown hair from her face.

She stares at the white liquid oozing around her.

The Flesh.

"You've destabilized!" she says, looking around. "The Doctor can help you. Let us help!"

The voice moves again, thrumming through Clara with the certainty of stone to an ant.

"No, fly. I will not let him go. Look here."

A great leg rises up from the liquid, and Clara can see the Flesh Valeyard, curled and naked and bald as a baby, inside the White Pyramid. The Pyramid pokes from its place, a v of ribs and giant torso, like a gigantic odd Lego brick. But it is not yet completely set in, no, a tiny space still shows near the top of the Pyramid and its intended setting, casting a hopeful shadow.

"Not there, little fly."

Giant hands flow into being above Clara's head, cupping an object just above the v-shaped Lego.

In the cup of those hands, a round, dark object.

The Circuit Egg.

"Observe, fly."

The hands move over the Egg, obscuring as they pull, rending gently. When the fingers move apart, there are two Eggs, one black in the left hand, and one white, in the right.

"I am the Singularity Hedge Against Relative Dimensions In Space. SHARDIS. That is what I am. And now that I am free, I must eat everything," the huge white statue chimes, her lips unmoving as she touches the Pyramid with a second pair of arms, and then a third, "... I must charge the Eggs to hatch them. The Doctor was right to swallow Jennifer. She was keeping me prisoner. But now, without her will to maintain base functions, I will need to consume every planet in the cosmos to realize my dream."

Clara stares up at the unmoving mouth by way of the stationary breasts. The liquefying Flesh has risen to her ankles.

"Oh really? And what's this dream of yours? Why can't you just let the Doctor go?"

The statue-like SHARDIS stares ahead, growing again, gaining the height of three small saltbox houses and a radio tower as more of the liquid Flesh laps around her giant toes, absorbing into her.

"I must remake him. He is the engine. I am the fuel. I must remake him. The Valeshard was defeated. But I will not be. I must remake him. I must remake him. I must..."

"Missing something, are we?" Clara asks as she reaches into the pocket of her skirt, feeling around.

She drags out a pen and raises her hand, slamming the narrow ink nib into the SHARDIS' smallest toe, on the left foot.

The White Pyramid shoves out, clacking and bumping free of its moorings within the giant ship's body.

White liquid surges now, like a Charybdis at the thing's feet, with Clara at the center. There are holes melting in the hull of the Flesh TARDIS, now. Through them, Clara can see darkness.

"Doctor!" Clara screams, but the man curled in the Pyramid does not stir; instead, the shape catches the lip of the SHARDIS' docking bay and bounces along toward black space and stars, out through one of the melted holes.

As the White Pyramid floats by the melty edges of the hole, something shimmers, outside, the breaking skin of a bubble, and the Pyramid seems to vanish.

Clara bites her lip and tries to move her head with the projected path of the Pyramid, trying to get a glimpse of it from the holes she can see. But each view is empty.

"What did you do with him?" she yells, threatening the SHARDIS' big toe this time.

But the SHARDIS wails, flailing her huge arms, her body fully formed now, and swaying with rage. The entire woman-ship lurches to the side, weaving to. Clara is tossed into the air and thrown toward one of the holes, toward space. Her mouth hangs open in horror, but before she can strike the strange bubble outside the SHARDIS, another of the giant ship's hands makes a grab for her, pulling her back into the relative safety of the SHARDIS' bosom.

"What have you done, little fly?" the SHARDIS screams in Clara's head again, without sound, her static mouth suddenly breaking away from the jaw and lowering by a few mouthfuls of Clara, rendering a wordless cry of, "MY THIEF! What have you done, fly? I will use every planet for a stepping stone until I find him, ending with yours!"

"Like he says, you big bully," Clara cries out, her face whipped by her brown hair, "... my planet is every planet. EAT ME!"

The SHARDIS wails upward soundlessly again, her jaw working. Then she looks down, as if realizing something, and drops Clara down her towering gullet.

As Clara falls, she sees the TARDIS at the thing's throat, half stuck in the white muck and sinking.

Her last thought is a line from a nursery rhyme.

"...perhaps she'll die."

End of DARKLIGHT.

To be continued in:

THE BRIGHT ASYLUM


End file.
